


Painting Immortality

by tryslora



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blood, Blood Magic, Death Eaters, M/M, Magical Artifacts, Painting, Portraits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 10:41:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1118929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora/pseuds/tryslora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Cam wants is for Adrian to stay with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Painting Immortality

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt _Wizarding Portrait, Permanent Sticking Charm and/or Piertotum Locomotor_ for the In the Shadow of the Season fest at hp_darkarts on Livejournal.
> 
> I am very happy to have been able to participate in this wee fest, and even more happy to have been able to work with wizarding portraits (a particular obsession of mine). Thank you to alpha reader and to my beta (thank you for helping me out in a pinch!); you are both so very appreciated. I do not own the world or characters of Harry Potter, but it’s fun to play with them.

Cam stares at the portrait hanging over the mantle opposite his bed. He reaches out, rubbing his thumb along the frame to wipe away a small ridge of rust that stains the mahogany. The colour is lighter against his skin, and he wipes it against his trousers quietly.

“It’s not your best work.” Large hands on his shoulders, a body leaning against his, warm and alive.

Cam leans back into him, feeling that heart beat against his back. He moves slightly, encouraging Adrian to wrap his arms around him, to hold on to him. He takes comfort in Adrian’s solidity, inhaling the scent that makes him _him_. “You think so? It’s one of my favourites.”

Adrian nudges Cam forward, close enough that Adrian can touch the canvas, fingers sliding over the furniture in the painted image. “It’s the dungeons,” he says. “Our room when we were students, if I’m right. But it seems like it’s missing something.”

“Of course it is.” Cam keeps his tone light. “It seems strange because none of us are there.” He knows exactly what is missing from the image, but he won’t tell Adrian that. It doesn’t matter. Not now. “Do you want to see the other work I’ve done?”

“Since I was here last? It couldn’t be all that much.” Adrian tugs and Cam turns towards him, going into the requested embrace easily. He lets Adrian tilt his head back, lets him bite at his throat, teasing him with the rub of his five o’clock shadow. Cam inhales roughly, loving the way Adrian takes control. Even though Cam is taller, broader… Adrian is always in charge when they are together.

“There are a few,” he manages to say. It’s a lie, but Adrian won’t know the difference. He doesn’t remember, after all. He never does.

Adrian raises one eyebrow and motions for Cam to lead the way, as if he didn’t know every inch of the flat. As if he weren’t intimately aware of every nook and cranny. It mocks him, but at the same time, it gives deference to the privacy of Cam’s studio, and he loves that about Adrian, that he can give him that space without losing the qualities that make him the perfect prick.

Cam nudges open the door and light spills into the hallway, natural light flooding in through the floor to ceiling windows and skylights. Canvases litter the room, some unfinished and covered, others complete and open, standing on easels. He hasn’t framed or hung these yet. This is where he comes to paint his heart, to bleed his emotions into gouache and oil.

Adrian moves slowly around the room, stopping in front of one easel, his back going stiff. “You painted Pucey Manor?” His tone is cold, low and dark.

“I painted the roof,” Cam clarifies. He stands behind Adrian, his arm around his centre, fingers over Adrian’s as they brush the painted overlapping slate tiles. “Where we all used to sit as boys.” It was Adrian’s escape, high above the ground, the one place his father wouldn’t dare to go. The boys of the families had all gathered there—Pucey, Warrington, Montague, Higgs, Flint—talking when they were young, and later drinking and smoking, waiting for a time when they could escape to play Quidditch in the Flint fields. Hiding from their respective fathers, from the expectations of the pure-blood life.

“Where I kissed you for the first time.” Adrian smirks. “Where you accused me of pretending. Told me that I would never feel the same way about you that you did about me.”

“You don’t,” Cam says simply. “But I’ll take what I can get.” It’s always been that way, after all. There is nothing to bind them together, and yet here they are, bound. “I’d say you should fuck me there, but the war might get in the way.”

Adrian’s expression grows stormy. “As long as my father lives, I will _not_ go back there.”

There are so many responses that Cam could give, but in the end, none of them are spoken. Not aloud, not where Adrian could hear and wonder over the things that would make no sense to his mind. Time never passes for him, after all. “When the war is done then,” he agrees. “When it’s safe.”

Adrian slides his fingers across the painted surface again, graceful fingers delicate and light as they skip across the muted colors. “We should hang this over the mantle, next to the one of our room.” He refuses to listen when Cam protests that it isn’t framed, picking it up from the easel and carrying it away.

They manage to get it in place, and Cam drives a nail to carefully prop it on. It seems right for it to be there, their two boyhood haunts hanging side by side, a reminder of a more innocent time.

“Strip,” Adrian says, and Cam laughs at the abrupt change of tone.

It sends heat straight to his gut, and he wastes no time doing exactly as Adrian says. They tumble to the floor in front of the fireplace, summoning the tin of slick lube from the nightstand, preparing each other quickly. It’s a quick fuck, anxious and hungry, and Cam drinks in every moment of it, memorising the touch and slip and slide of how they work together. It’s always _good_ with Adrian. He’s a fucking miracle that Cam never expected in his life, and one that he knew he could never keep.

Just a few more hours, that’s all he asks.

They lie there surrounded by sweat and musk and sticky fluids when it’s done, Adrian collapsed across Cam’s chest. It is perfect, everything Cam has been wanting. Missing. Hungering for, day after day and lonely night after lonely night. His one wish for the holiday—a holiday he doesn’t dare celebrate.

“Stay,” he murmurs, because Adrian never does. He never did, before, and Cam has never been able to ask before now. But this is Christmas Eve, a special time for magic and wishing, and this wish is all that lies in his heart.

Adrian goes stiff and rolls off of Cam, sitting up with his back curved, the knobs of his spine evident. “I can’t. You know he—”

“Forget the Dark Lord,” Cam bites out, even though it’s the wrong thing to say. Adrian’s head whips around, fists clenched and eyes wide as if Voldemort himself could hear the oath.

“I bear the Mark,” Adrian hisses. “I am _his_ before I am yours.”

“It’s—” Cam stops himself just before he says _it’s Christmas_ because that wouldn’t be right to Adrian’s mind. “It’s important to me. What if he sends you out tomorrow and you don’t come back?”

That’s the question he has never been able to ask, the question he knows Adrian doesn’t _want_ him to ask. And the problem is, Cam knows the answer. He knows it in the depth of his heart and he knows it from the sick feeling in his stomach. The answer is… everything just ends. It stops, and there is no grief deep enough to express the darkness that falls over Cam at being left behind.

“Stay,” he whispers again, fingers flat against the base of Adrian’s spine. “Please… stay.”

Adrian’s head drops forward. “If he calls, I will have to go.”

It won’t happen. It _can’t_ happen, not tonight. “All right,” Cam agrees as he pulls Adrian closer. “If he calls, you’ll go. But for tonight, this is just us. No Mark to come between us.”

“I can’t erase it.” Adrian’s laugh is bitter. He holds his wrist out, forearm facing up, the dark lines thick and rich against his skin. Cam puts his own arm out next to it, his skin a shade darker than Adrian’s, the lines on his arm made of slender and silver scars. Adrian touches those scars, his brow furrowing deeply. “Where did these come from?”

 _Blood_. _There was so damned much blood, welling up from his arms, dripping into the paint in red rivulets that turned to rust._  

Cam clenches his hand. “Cat scratch,” he lies. “I scar easily and they show up against my skin. You just never noticed because all those hits during Quidditch were to my head.” He curls his free hand into a fist, knocking it against the side of his head. “The scars are hidden under my hair.”

“I don’t mind scars,” Adrian says. “And you’re just looking for an excuse to get my hands in your hair.”

“I don’t need an excuse; you want your hands all over me.” Cam reaches for Adrian, pulling him back down to the floor. It’s hard, but it’s warm, and it is right under the two paintings that mean so much to Cam’s memories. He smiles to see them seem so empty, missing the people that should fill them.

That’s as it should be.

“Stay,” he says one more time, and Adrian kisses the words away, turning them into moans and whimpers and the slap of flesh against flesh until they both go silent in the aftermath.

Cam lies there with Adrian sleeping— _sleeping_ —against him. He takes care when he moves, not wanting to disturb his lover. They will spend the night together after Cam does this one thing. This one _important_ thing, to make certain that he is never parted from Adrian again.

He is familiar with the curse by now, speaking the words below the edge of hearing, watching dispassionately as his arm opens and blood wells up. He grips Adrian’s arm with his hand, wand positioned over the Mark, and he speaks it again and again until that, too, is sliced open as Adrian screams.

“Shh… shh…” He clasps his hand to Adrian’s arm, pressing wrist to wrist, holding them together. “Sleep.” Another charm and consciousness falls away for Adrian as their blood merges. When he heals them both, the silver of fresh scars remains.

Finally safe, he lets himself sleep, wrapped in Adrian’s arms.

When Christmas dawns, Cam’s sister steps through the Floo and wonders at the empty room. She walks around, touching furniture, seeking some sign that her brother might have left as to where he has gone. In the absence of any note, she knows he must be planning to be back soon, so she can wait.

She smiles to see the new painting hanging, slightly tilted, above the fireplace. Cam’s work only gets better as every day he paints the pure-blood losses from the war. The two boys on the roof have their backs turned… she can’t see who they might be, although she certainly recognises Pucey Manor. She smiles slightly to see that they have their hands linked, their heads bent close in conversation… that they pause to kiss before one bears the other down against the roof, and she turns her head to grant them privacy.

Whoever they are, they have found solace beyond the veil. So many of their classmates were lost to the war, but at least in Cam’s art, they live on.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! You can also find me [on tumblr](http://tryslora.tumblr.com). Please feel free to drop me an Ask and talk!


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